5th September Whether the weather?

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Thursday 5th I did a little more black matt painting then set up for some solar imaging under blue skies. The cloud and heavy showers continued so I gave up.

Friday: Went up to check the dome and all was dry inside despite the rain. Windy, showers and no sunshine! Gales and torrential rain again in the late afternoon. Went up to check after the deluge and wind with the shutters downwind. Wet under the shutters in the east. I'll just have to close the gap left when the shutters are closed.

The air gap along the outside of the closed shutters allows the heat out in summer. However, the heavy rain is obviously bouncing off the dome surface and up under the shutters. I didn't want to risk a gap between the closed shutters when I built them. It seems I overdid the overall width [when both shutters are closed] by about an inch shared between both. I can only just get my fingertips between the ribs of the shutter and the dome but it's enough to leak during heavy rain.

It was a hell of a job fitting the completed shutters so high off the ground. The heavy-duty drawer slides were inaccessible from inside the dome but needed to be screwed into place just to support the heavy shutters. Catch 22!

The load was highly asymmetrical until all the slides were screwed firmly home and both were parallel AND horizontal. I kept unscrewing them and moving the shutters up and down. I was terrified the shutters were going to fly away and go straight through my shed roof!

Saturday 7th a fine start but steadily increasing cloud cover. Went over to do some H-a solar imaging. 2000 frames each at 60fps in SharpCap. Processed in Registax followed by PhotoFiltre for false colour and resizing. I pushed the image [Right] too far in Registax Wavelets and now it looks too artificial.

Can't see the small proms shown in Gong H-a. They usually show up when I simply increase the gain in SharpCap but not today. [Well, not yet anyway.] I finally found them amongst the glare and added the 2x WO Barlow. Now it has clouded over. And cleared again. Image left is the best I can do under poor seeing and windy conditions. Gave up for an early lunch due to heavy cloud.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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